Thursday, May 10, 2012

The Invitation

Participants are invited to relax in the space and have some cake and a
drink.

Participants are asked to play in the space.

Please use any of the materials provided if you wish.

From 10-10.30 please communicate without talking.

Ideas are discussed.

Participants are asked to leave.

Thank you

Materials

Fabric

Tape

Some things out of the recycling bin

Plasticine

Markers

Digital Camera

Assorted musical instruments

Cardboard

Cake

Warm Drinks

Pegs

String

Cardboard tubes

Paper

Tent poles

Boxes

Scissors

Our Work in Progress Questions

What makes a space a creative space?

What makes creativity happen?

How can we encourage somebody to be playful?

What is play?

What is creativity?

What do you need to be able
to play?

What do you need to be
uninhibited?

Why don’t we play?

What stops us doing?

What in a space stops us playing?

What in a space stops us making?

What is drawing?

What is ‘good’ drawing?

Why don’t we draw?

Why do we draw?

When does teaching flow?

When does learning flow?

How can teaching flow?

How can learning flow?

How do you organise your
learning environment?

Laura
Robinson and Liz Stirling have invited you to their space.

They share
the space with the artist Paul Digby his drawings are on the walls. They also
share their space with their children Edith (8), Arthur (8), Frank (6), Martha
(6) and Polly (10 months).

Their
research is about learning, creativity, childhood, space and play.

The space
has triggered a focused period realising how a space initiates creativity.

The
activities so far have all been collaborations. Laura and Liz are interested in
equality within the learning environment and how we can collaborate whatever
our backgrounds, age, profession or physical capabilities…

There is
no hierarchy within the space we try to make is as playful and idea led as
possible… We try to flow!

It is a
free flowing space where we want participants to be relaxed and empowered by
their activity.

References

Below are some interesting aspects of the recent Ofsted study, the study
was in 91 schools and colleges all over the country.

On Drawing
in education:

Drawing as a form of communication has transcended
history and cultures. In arts education it is viewed as central to students’
visual and creative thinking. Drawing is a key skill for pupils wishing to work
in the sector. This is reflected in its specific inclusion in examination
assessment criteria, in course content and research in further and higher
education. Since the last survey, international interest in drawing and the
range of accreditation specifically focused on drawing, have increased.[1] Pupils of all ages
cited drawing as one of the most important subject skills. Perceptions of their
own drawing abilities were often at the heart of their attitude to the subject.

However, inspection findings highlighted that the
notion that ‘everyone can draw’ is not being kept alive beyond the early stages of schooling. Discussions with
pupils across the primary school age
range revealed that many pupils’ confidence in drawing diminished incrementally
as they got older. Pupils who had
lost interest in drawing usually perceived that they
were not good at it, especially in recording appearances accurately.

Teaching
all pupils to draw with confidence and creativity was too low a priority in too
many schools. If art, craft and design education is to play a full part in
helping pupils ‘make a mark’ in the
future, drawing can no longer remain a concern without a cause.

This next extract highlights successful strategies
in art, craft and design education:

Strong inclusive practice went beyond ensuring that
different groups of students progressed at similar rates. Outstanding provision
ensured that no opportunities were missed to promote equality and diversity.
Strategies included:

·reference
to artists, craftmakers and designers whose work challenged gender or ethnic
stereotypes, or showed how disabilities had been overcome

·clear
explanation about the value of individual and collaborative, intellectual and
practical, aesthetic and functional work in the context of different times and
cultures

·lessons
that took account of students’ prior attainment and their
preferred learning styles

·topics
that enabled students to explore their own cultural interests as well as
stimulating interest in unfamiliar cultures, past and present

·use
of diverse examples of students’ work that conveyed a clear message about high
quality taking many different forms

·good-quality
resources to help students, their parents and carers afford specialist tools
and materials for use at home, or information about how to access funding for
gallery visits.

'As direct play is denied to adults and
gradually discouraged in children, the impulse to play emerges not in true
games alone, but in unstated ones of power and deception: people find
themselves playing less with each other than on or off each other.'
Also 'in play one is carefree in a game one is anxious about winning'

Allan
Kaprow in The Education of the Un-Artist Part 2 (1972)

To allow children to be
completely free to play as much as they like.
Creative and imaginative play is an essential part of childhood and
development. Spontaneous, natural play should not be undermined or redirected
by adults into learning experiences. Play belongs to the child.
Summerhill Policy Statement

Ernest Schachtel
in 'On Memory and Childhood Amnesia': 'The adult is usually not capable of
experiencing what the child experiences; more often than not he is not even
capable of imagining what the child experiences.' he talks about the newness
of everything for the child...

‘I think that it is a mark of mutual respect that
all persons involved in a Happening be willing and committed participants who
have a clear idea of what they are to do. This is simply accomplished by
writing out the scenario or score for all and discussing it thoroughly
beforehand. In this respect it is not different from the preparations for a
parade, a football match, a wedding or religious service. It is not even
different from play. The one big difference is that while knowledge of the
scheme is necessary, professional talent is not; the situations in a Happening
are lifelike or, if they are unusual, are so rudimentary that professionalism
is actually uncalled for. Actors are stage trained and bring over habits from
their art that are hard to shake off; the same is true of any other kind of
showman or trained athlete. The best participants have been persons not
normally engaged in art or performance, but who are moved to take part in an
activity that is at once meaningful to them in its ideas yet natural in its
methods.’ Allan Kaprow

‘How does it feel to be in
Flow?

1 Completely involved in
what you are doing-focused, concentrated

2 A sense of ecstasy-of
being outside everyday reality

3 Great inner
clarity-knowing what needs to be done, and how well we are doing

4 Knowing that the
activity is doable-that our skills are adequate to the task

5 A sense of serenity-no
worries about oneself, and a feeling of growing beyond the boundaries of ego

6 Timelessness-thoroughly
focused on the present, hours seem to pass by in minutes

7 Intrinsic
motivation-whatever produces flow becomes its own reward’

Csikszentmihalyi

Biographies of key references

Allan Kaprow – ‘Happenings’Kaprow (1927 –2006) was an
American artist and a pioneer of the concepts of performance art and
"Happening" in the late 1950s and 1960s, as well as their theory. To
Kaprow, a happening was “activities engaged in by participants for the sake of
playing." There was no distinction or hierarchy between artist and viewer.
Kaprow's most famous happenings began around 1961 to 1962, when he would take
students or friends out to a specific site to perform a small action. Kaprow
developed techniques to prompt a creative response from the audience. He rarely
recorded his Happenings which made them a one time occurrence. He has published
extensively and was Professor Emeritus in the Visual Arts Department of the University of California,
San Diego.

Colin Ward – writings on urban childhood

Author and social
theorist, Ward (1924-2010) is renowned as a pioneer in urban education and the
founder-editor of the ‘Bulletin for Environmental Education’. He wrote the
seminal ‘The Child in the City’ (1978), and ‘Streetwork: The Exploding School’
(1973), with Tony Fyson. His vision was to get children out of school and into
their communities, to talk to local people, explore their neighbourhood, and
understand how buildings, streets, ­landscapes and social life interact. Ward
explored the myriad and subtle ways in which the child has used the street in
the past and still does today. Against this background he asks what can be done
to make the links between the city and child more fruitful and enjoyable for
both. His work raises urgent questions for teachers, parents, and
policy-makers.

Nils Norman

Norman (born 1966) is an English artist with a vision of
how cities should be used expressed through art and activism. In 2007, his work
in Tate Modern’s Global Cities exhibition featured posters displaying
ecological and environmental information as a comment on bad urban planning,
architecture and street design. Norman’s
work reacts to the apparent homogenization of urban spaces in regeneration
projects and has been compared to the urban projects of artists such as Claes
Oldenburg, Robert Smithson, Gordon Matta-Clark, and Krzysztof Wodiczko. Norman has experimented
with theorist Colin Ward's 1973 thesis "Streetwork" and has also
referenced Cedric Price, especially Price's "Non-Plan".

Claire Bishop

Bishop (born 1971) is an
art historian, theorist and critic widely acclaimed for her writing on
socially-engaged art. Bishop is editor of the highly regarded volumes Participation (2006) and Installation Art: A Critical History
(2005) and is a contributor to many art journals including Artforum, Flash Art, and October;
her essay “Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics,” which appeared in October in 2004, remains an influential
critique of relational aesthetics. In 2008 she co-curated (with Mark Sladen)
the exhibition Double Agent (ICA, London;
Mead Gallery, Warwick Arts Centre; and Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead). Bishop is associate professor
of art history at CUNY Graduate Center, New
York. Her previously professorial roles include
Department of Art History, University
of Warwick, and Visiting
Professor in the Curating Contemporary Art, Royal College of Art.

Palle Nielsen. ‘The
Model - A Model for a Qualitative Society’
(Born 1942) In 1968, the young activist Palle
Nielsen approached the Moderna Museet in Stockholm
with a proposal for turning the museum into an adventure playground. For a
month, his ‘Model for a Qualitative Society' offered a space exclusively for
children, without parents or educators. In his essay on this project, Lars Bang
Larsen analyses the utopia of a self-organized society that aimed to encourage
personal freedom and collaboration between individuals. The documentation of
this work forms part of the MACBA Collection, Barcelona.

Lars
Bang Larsen
Born in 1972 in Silkeborg, Denmark, Larsen is an art historian at the University of Copenhagen. He has co-curated group
exhibitions such as “A History of Irritated Material,” Raven Row, London (2010), “Populism,” Stedelijk
Museum, Amsterdam
(2005), “La insurrección invisible de un millón de mentes,” Sala Rekalde, Bilbao (2005), and “The Echo Show,” Tramway, Glasgow (2003), a. o. His
books include The Model: A Model for a Qualitative Society, 1968 (2010)
and Sture Johannesson (2002).

Artur
ŻmijewskiŻmijewski (born 1966) is a Polish visual artist, filmmaker
and photographer. He is an author of short video movies and photography
exhibitions, which were shown all over the world. One of Zmijewski's many
portraits of social exclusion, ‘The Singing Lesson II’, features a choir of
deaf teens cacophonously belting out Bach. Rather than giving them the sympathy
vote, the artist confronts us with their overwhelming otherness. Zmijewski has
said that it is not enough for art to ask questions. Rather, artists need to
get real and provide some arguments. His solo show If It Happened Only Once
It’s As If It Never Happened was at Kunsthalle Basel in 2005, the same year
in which he represented Poland
at the 51st Venice Biennale. He has shown in Documenta 12 (2007), Manifesta 4
(2002), and the Museum of Modern Art, New
York as part of their Projects’ Series (2009).
In 2009, Cornerhouse, Manchester, presented the
first major UK
survey of Zmijewski’s work.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi born September 29, 1934, in Fiume, Italy
– now Rijeka, Croatia) is a Hungarianpsychology professor, who emigrated to the
United States at the age of 22. He is noted for both his work in the study of happiness and creativity and also for his notoriously
difficult name, in terms of pronunciation for non-native speakers of the Hungarian language,
but is best known as the architect of the notion of flow
and for his years of research and writing on the topic. He is the author of
many books and over 120 articles or book chapters. Martin Seligman, former president of the American
Psychological Association, described Csikszentmihalyi as the world's
leading researcher on positive psychology.
Csikszentmihalyi once said "Repression is not the way to virtue. When
people restrain themselves out of fear, their lives are by necessity
diminished. Only through freely chosen discipline can life be enjoyed and still
kept within the bounds of reason."
His works are influential and are widely cited.